Queen Victoria eBook

Lord Beaconsfield, whom she regarded with sincere
affection, possessed a remarkable influence over the
Queen, for the simple reason that he never forgot
to treat her as a woman. He was noted throughout
his life for his chivalry to the opposite sex, and
his devotion to his wife was very touching.

He was a firm believer in the power of the Crown for
good. “The proper leader of the people,”
he declared, “is the individual who sits upon
the throne.” He wished the Sovereign to
be in a position to rule as well as to reign, to be
at one with the nation, above the quarrels and differences
of the political parties, and to be their representative.

When quite a young man, he declared that he would
one day be Prime Minister, and with this end in view
he entered Parliament against the wishes of his family.
He was an untiring worker all his life, and a firm
believer in action. “Act, act, act without
ceasing, and you will no longer talk of the vanity
of life,” was his creed.

His ideas on education were original, and he did everything
in his power to improve the training of the young.
In 1870 he supported the great measure for a scheme
of national education. Some years earlier he
declared that “it is an absolute necessity that
we should study to make every man the most effective
being that education can possibly constitute him.
In the old wars there used to be a story that one
Englishman could beat three members of some other nation.
But I think if we want to maintain our power, we ought
to make one Englishman equal really in the business
of life to three other men that any other nation can
furnish. I do not see otherwise how . . . we
can fulfil the great destiny that I believe awaits
us, and the great position we occupy.”

He did more than any other Minister to raise the Crown
to the position it now occupies, and no monarch ever
had a more devoted and faithful servant. His
high standard of morals and his force of character
especially appealed to the English people, and his
loyalty to his friends and colleagues remained unshaken
throughout his whole life. He impressed not only
his own countrymen, but also foreigners, with his
splendid gifts of imagination and foresight.

Bismarck, the man of ‘blood and iron,’
who welded the disunited states of Germany into a
united and powerful empire, considered that Queen
Victoria was the greatest statesman in Europe, and
of the great Beaconsfield he said: “Disraeli
is England.”

Disraeli was a master of wit and phrase, and many
of his best sayings and definitions have become proverbial,
e.g. “the hansom, the ‘gondola’
of London,” “our young Queen and our old
institutions,” “critics, men who have
failed,” “books, the curse of the human
race.”